<p>*WARNING: SARCASM AHEAD*<BR><BR>And Sauron! Poor, poor Sauron. They were all trying to destroy him and he was just a handicapped guy who needed a lot of help and a very special chair to keep him alive! What's more, it was all the fault of some big white male who chopped off his finger because Sauron was different! If he'd just been allowed to live in peace, maybe he wouldn't have bothered them, maybe he could've got some counseling or something.<BR>I can't even let my little sisters watch this movie because they would get the idea that handicapped people are evil. Just because they have nothing but one eye and keep armies and explosives in their back-yard doesn't mean that they are evil! Right?<BR><img src="http://www.tolkienonline.com/mb/i/expressions/face-icon-small-rolleyes.gif"border=0><BR><BR><BR>*End of Sarcasm*<BR><BR>You know what's really sad? If this guy even reads our responses, it's only going to drive him farther into the whole conspiracy theory stuff. You kinda feel sorry for him, living with that kind of hate and fear. God bless him...<BR>H.R.<BR> </p>

<p><i>To paint the Lord of the Rings as Racist is profoundly LIBERAL! This person is engaging in the same sort of attacks that have been mounted against the JUdeo-Christian Moral Code of America.</i><BR><BR>First of all, I'm liberal and never said LOTR was racist. Secondly, America was founded by deists, not devout Christians. This country was not founded on a Judeo-Christian moral code, but a secular one. </p>

<p><i>I wish you could understand your hypocrisy and arrogance. You don't even realize your own denial and its punitive consequences to 'other' people in this world today. Beyond Tolkien matters and trilogy, I bet none of you who responded, is black or a person of 'color'.</i><BR><BR>I happen to be a gay, if that counts for anything. There is no denial going on here; it is you who insists on reading racism into the story. No race in the books or films is meant to represent a race in reality, except for the dwarves, who are essentially Jews, according to Tolkien. Aside from that, the Haradrim are Haradrim, the Rohirrim are Rohirrim, the Gondorians are Gondorians, Uruk-Hai are Uruk-Hai, Hobbits are Hobbits, Elves are Elves. None of those races is meant to represent blacks, asians, or Indians. Nobody looks at an imaginary race on film and says "They're blacks," or "They're Indians." And certainly they won't figure that the film is a reflection of the reality of those races. So how is my refusal to recognize the racial parallels of these races; how is my refusal to say that the Haradrim represent Indians or blacks; causing any harmful consequences to you? </p>

<p>Grow up <img src="http://www.tolkienonline.com/mb/i/expressions/face-icon-small-rolleyes.gif"border=0><BR><BR>This is a load of rubbish.<BR><BR><i>After watching the Lord of the Rings films I thank the universe and Mother Earth for the Rap/hip-hop culture and the counterbalancing influence the Rap/hip-hop culture has on the youth here in America and around the world.</i><BR><BR>Pfffft. "Counterbalancing influence"? And this person claims not to be racist. Racism goes both ways. A lot (not all) of rap is extremely racist and sexist. Why is racism against whites and sexism against women all right?<BR><BR><i>I've been lucky enough to gain perspective that when you create an evil character (Uruk-hai) that resembles native Americans as they have done in the Lord of the Rings films a great deal of cultural and racial alienation will occur.</i><BR><BR>... That seems more an insult to Native Americans than anything. I never noticed the resemblance, thankfully.<BR><BR><i> the Monarch of the land of Rohan, King Théoden a white guy yelled out "You great warriors of the West" </i><BR><BR>Have you read the books? No? I didn't think so.<BR><BR>Your conspiracy theory, however, was quite amusing. Gave me a few giggles. </p>

<p>I agree with Cresson. Its attitudes like that of Lloyd and Colonel Rand that seem to prolong the issue of prejudice and racism. I am not trying to say that racism and prejudice do not exist, but I do not think that comments like...<BR><BR><i>None of you or your ancestors have been facing pillages, disfranchisement, atrocious brutalities, industrial exploitation and wholesale murders like us for the last 300 years .. </i><BR><BR>...make things any better. First of all, look beyond yourself for a while, who are you to say that your "racial" group is the only one who has suffered crimes and experianced tragedys. Every group of people can pinpoint times in their history where they have experianced pain and suffering. <BR><BR>Secondly, perhaps you should pay more attention to todays problems and less time "moaning" about the problems that happened hundreds of years ago.<BR><BR>P.S. I know this means nothing to most people , but I am a colored person, an italian, though that doenst really count as being colored to certain people. <BR><BR>P.S.S. Colonel Rand, I am not trying to insult you and if I have, that was by no means my intention. If you read this, please do leave a response, I am eager to learn, and would very much like to be enlightened if my comments were wrong. </p>

<p>I do believe it was the Persians and Egyptians that ruled the world with slaves for up to and over 1300 years at a time...come on every single race and culture has done something bad to others..and all have suffered from evil and until we as a human race get over it we will continue to hate.. </p>

<p><i>to support the idea that Tolkien epic has not a Caucasian or 'western' supremacist agenda in detriment of "other" people is to me to me sheer hypocrisy. Like you don't know Literature, the media and hollywood are part of the propaganda machine please! </i><BR><BR>Obviously, this individual doesn't understand the context in which LotR was written. Tolkien wasn't interested in parallels to our modern world, but in recreating the past from the point of view of Northern Europe. This includes apriori an ethnocentric viewpoint on the part of the myth. As a myth, it is designed to be adapted as people of differing backgrounds and cultures see fit. Replace the good guys in LotR with some other people in some other time and pit them mythologically against "white" people, with a white Sauron and white orcs and all...I won't be offended (as a white person) because, if the story is written properly as a historical mythology, I will understand its own context rather than judging it on the basis of my own time and place: as a vitally important (albeit fictional) story to a particular people and time that--far from advocating a racist tapestry--utilizes both alien and familar concepts in order to make a moral and/or spiritual point. Color is irrelevant...extract from the myth the central themes and you'll see that everything serves simply as "stand-ins" </p>

<p>What complete and total (TOS violation). I mean, come on! Nearly everyone in the U.S. except for people like you are colorblind anyway! It's only people who gripe about others that notice skin color. I don't care if I'm sitting next to a African-American or Japanese or Korean person! It makes no difference! <BR><BR>And by the way, you get the 1 rating instead of zero because it made me laugh. Horse hockey. </p>

<p>that made me laugh. i didn't even read the whole article, and i don't care to, but the two towers thing was a gas. about the colored folks in Rotk, they lived in southern Middle-Earth, and by the beach, so they would be tan anyway. that's insane. seriously. </p>

<p>I majored in History thank you very much. The Puritans were a bunch of Calvinist snobs, and thanks to them we have the Salem Witch Trials staining our history, but they were not the founders of the United States. Thomas Jefferson had nothing but disdain for the Bible, referring to it as a dungheap, and listing as one of his fondest wishes that that last tyrant be strangled along with the last pope. He regarded Paul as the corrupter of Jesus's teachings, and never believed that Jesus was God's son. He even rewrote the gospels by removing the resurrection, and any reference to Jesus being God's son, or performing miracles. The other founder fathers, as they are called, were of similar minds. The God mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is not a Judeo-Christian god, but "Nature's god," a figure whom they thought of quite differently than Jews or Christians did. The founding ideas of our country did not come from the Bible, but from Rome, Greece, and John Locke. ("Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is just a variation on "life, liberty, and property.&quot<img src="http://www.tolkienonline.com/mb/i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif"border=0> Our own Constitution not only separates church and state (and if you think that's just a modern interpretation, read Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists), and also prohibits religious tests as a requirement for holding office. Even if the former doesn't convince you, the latter shows that religion was never meant to be part of government. We're a republic, not a theocracy. Neither the Pledge of Allegiance nor our money had "One nation under God" on it until the 1950s, during the McCarthy age. I've read history books, not Marx or "Elitist thinkers." Maybe you should too. Look at that part of the consitution, and look also at the Treaty of Tripolis, which we made with the Barbary Pirates, which states that "The United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." That NAMBLA remark was totally out of line. And nobody said you don't have the right to express your religion. That's a straw man, the sign of a poor debater. What I did say is that we were not founded on religion, and history supports me. <BR><BR> </p>

<p>Tolkien wrote his stories based on what he grew up with. He lived in freaken Europe! I hate people that have to complain about the littlest thing just to get attention. Come to think of it, most fantasy stories are racist. The Neverending story had no person of a different race. <BR> <BR>I did like the idea of taking trees to see the movie and show them how they were shown as slow to make up their minds and such. Thank you. You gave me a good laugh. </p>

<p>Good grief... -sighs-<BR>My response after reading this was: What the...Is this fool serious? Perhaps it's a parody? How sad...<BR>To the comment about <i>I bet none of you who responded, is black or a person of 'color'.</i> Guess what? I'm half Japanese and half Chinese! Golly me, I'm a 'person of colour' and I went and responded. How daring and strange. Reading this was...painful. I am no superb historian, but even I know when there are some faulty 'facts'. Such fallacies!! It's very hard to prove a point when you do not use research properly for actual facts and use them to support a rational argument. Recall that Tolkien desired to create a mythology type thing for the English or something like that. Of course it's going to be an ethnocentric story according to your terms. However, the races in Middle Earth weren't exactly based on colour and race, as somebody pointed out. And Native Americans as Uruk-Hai?? How on earth did you get that? I don't know...they kind of looked like...oh I don't know...Uruk Hai to me. Strange...<BR><i>After watching the Lord of the Rings films I thank the universe and Mother Earth for the Rap/hip-hop culture and the counterbalancing influence the Rap/hip-hop culture has on the youth here in America and around the world.</i> Ah...I think you have your thanks mixed up. If I recall correctly, quite a bit of rap and hip-hop have degrading remarks directed at women and other groups.<BR>Next time, tell your arguments to some fellow illogical people who would actually fall for such... drivel. Well, I'm done my response for now. This was kind of fun, actually... Maybe that's why it's up here. For entertainment value =D </p>

<p>Is life really this stereotyped, narrow and serious? How painfully sad it is to still be reading this tosh after all these years. Not because it pours light on some great prejudical truth in the books, but because it pours light on the intellectually shackled gollums who write it. Blind in their caves, obsessed by their own Ring (in the case the neo-modern claptrap that Western civilisation is to blame for everything and Tolkien is its fascist propagandist) they fail to look up or out to the wider truths and messages of the book. Snuffle in the dark, children, for the master speaks great things about the human spirit you will never grasp, and perhaps the white faces in this story simply reflect the fact that it is a tale based in Anglo-Saxon myth. Duuuuh! </p>

<p>its so obvious that he is just as racist as the "white" people he is downing. So really he's just another narrow minded person who wouldn't know a history book if it hit him in the head! Heaven forbid he actually try to read the books before writing about them! </p>

<p>First of all, he obviously doesn't know about the wild men who join Saruman in The Two Towers. And one of the reasons tolkien created "The Orc", at least I believe, was to avoid this kind of racist analagy. The orc represents evil, corruption, and possibly a soldier of industry, not a specific race. Also, if a person comes from the south around Harad, they will have darker skin just as a person from any dessert will. There is nothing racict about it. This guy needs to read LOTR and get the facts straight. SERIOUSLY... </p>

<p>HOW ARE THEY RACIST!!!! <img src="http://www.tolkienonline.com/mb/i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif"border=0><BR>If you think about the dwarfs being one race, and elves being another, and then mens, orcs, wizards, hobbits, etc. would all be other races. In fact the Lord of the Rings is actually against the whole racist thing! It's about the forces of good uniting to fight evil! That lunatic who wrote the article clearly didn't know what he was talking about. I personally agree with all who speak before me. And someone give him a life!<BR> </p>